Mafia Monopoly

Games are often a society's ritual fantasies. Parker Brothers' Monopoly, for example, was introduced in 1935 as a Depression daydream of striking it rich with hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. The coming election year has prompted several pick-the-President exercises (TIME, Nov. 8). It is difficult to predict what sociologists, or the Italian-American Civil Rights League, may make of a game called The Godfather --"for All the Families."

The game comes in a box shaped like a small violin case. On the playing board, the island of Manhattan is divided into neighborhoods--Harlem, Little Italy, the Lower East Side. "The object of the game," the instructions explain, "is to take control of a racket--bookmaking, extortion, loan sharking or hijacking--in as many of the neighborhoods on the board as possible." Players draw bad-break cards ("St. Valentine's Day card addressed to you, lose one strongarm and $250") or good-break cards, such as "Friendly persuasion. You get two strongarms and $150." The player with the highest score of rapine and venality becomes the Godfather. Unlike Monopoly, with its blind acquisitive luck still tied to stern if inexplicable morality ("Go directly to jail"), the players of The Godfather never get locked up.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.